For some reason, the New York Council of School Superintendents invited Mike Petrilli of the conservative Fordham Institute to attend their annual meeting in Albany and tell them how to end the war over school reform.
I say “for some reason,” because Mike is one of the most determined warriors in the war over school reform. His idea of ending the “war over school reform” is for people to share his views. He loves charters, he hates unions, he is a fierce advocate for the Common Core, he thinks that poverty doesn’t matter, and he believes that charters are for strivers, not for unmotivated students. I know Mike fairly well, or I did, since I used to be on the board of the Fordham Institute. I don’t think we have had a conversation since I left the board in 2009. So far as I know, he has never been a teacher or a principal or a superintendent. He is not a scholar of education; he has no experience as a researcher in any discipline. He has worked for a conservative think tank with a strongly partisan point of view, and he worked as a political appointee of the George W. Bush administration in charge of “innovation.” He is now president of the Fordham Institute, which makes him a big player inside the Beltway and in conservative circles.
Peter Greene read his speech (I have not) and called Mike out on a number of points. Mike dissed defenders of public education (like me) because we think that poverty is an obstacle for poor kids and affects their ability to attain high test scores. People like me think that schools that enroll high numbers of poor kids need smaller class sizes, and more of everything that is taken for granted in well-resourced suburban schools. He thinks we are making excuses, despite the fact that standardized tests everywhere serve as measures of family wealth–with children of the affluent at the top and children of the poor at the bottom. However, as Peter points out, Mike is quite willing to exclude kids from charters who don’t meet their expectations.
Peter Greene writes that Petrilli’s views are:
……also insulting to the millions of teachers who are in the classroom day after day, doing the best they can with the resources they have. Hey, teachers– if you’re not succeeding with all of your students, it has nothing to do with obstacles and challenges in your path. You just don’t believe enough.
Then Petrilli pivots to criticize reformers, mostly for creating unrealistic definitions of success and failure. All students will not be ready to go to college, and not all schools labeled failing are, in fact, failing.
He suggests that superintendents advocate for growth measures in evaluating schools. He calls on them to call out schools that are failing, because it will increase their credibility. He does not take any time explaining what standards the individual student growth should be measured against, nor why.
He also throws in a plug for vocational education, and on this I’m in complete agreement with him.
But in this section Petrilli has mapped out a “sensible center” that I do not recognize. On the one side, an extreme straw-man version of reform opponents, and on the other, a tiny concession that assumes the fundamentals of reform are sound. Petrilli’s sensible middle has nothing to say about the destructiveness of test-driven accountability, the warping of the system that comes from making schools accountable to the federal government, or the lack of full funding and support. On the one hand he dismisses anyone who wants to talk about the effects of poverty on education, but on the other, he acknowledges the unfairness of comparing schools where students arrive already behind on their first day. Petrilli’s sensible middle is a bit of a muddle….
Petrilli acknowledges that his charter love might be why eyebrows have been raised to ceiling height for his appearance at the supers’ gathering, but he says New York is charter territory because Albany leads the nation in production of education red tape. The awesome thing about charters is that they get to run without all that tapiness, and the superintendents should agitate for the same tapeless freedom. And if they can’t get it, they should get in on the charter fun.
This third point is brief, perhaps because there are no details to add to this. How does one elaborate on these points. Ask Albany for freedom that they won’t grant you in a zillion years? Join the charter game by finding millionaires to back you? Stop being so resentful that politicians, with the backing and encouragement of outfits like the Fordham Foundation, have been steadily stacking the deck against public schools and in favor of charteristas? Yes, it’s probably just as well that Petrilli didn’t dwell too long on this point.
I am sure Mike didn’t mention that two of Albany’s most celebrated charters–the Brighter Choice middle schools–were closed a day or so before Petrilli spoke to the superintendents–for poor performance.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you great post
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How can it be that charters don’t have all the “red tape” of the public schools, yet their per capita administrative costs are far higher, as Jersey Jazzman has demonstrated, than those of the public schools?
Not to mention, what happens to the “choice” sector without the public school system acting as a safety net/guarantor of a public education?
I think I’ll designate my local school as “high performing”: and refuse to “backfill”. Ooops! There goes 25% of the kids in the county!
The stubborn denial that a universal public system IS a system and pulling one thread changes the fabric in ways that the Best and The Brightest may not have anticipated is borderline delusional.
“Mike Petrilli is quite willing to exclude kids from charters who don’t meet their expectations.”
When I was a child in K – 12, I would have been one of those children. I was a very late bloomer who was born in a family living in poverty and as I grew up, thanks to my dad getting into a labor union, we climbed out of poverty as a family even though my older brother never did leave poverty and, the last time I checked, his 7 children, all much older adults today, also still live in poverty.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but we already have an example in New Orleans with what is cheapening to children who don’t meet the expectations of corporate Charters—those children get dumped on the streets and can’t find a school to take them.
It’s obvious to me that the NCLB driven Common Core crap agenda will eventually lead to the end of mandatory public education and millions of children living in poverty and/or who have severe learning disabilities will end up on the streets because mandatory education will be dead and the world of child labor will return with a vengeance—if children as young as five can find jobs even for one dollar a day. Maybe Walmart will fire all the adults and hire the children. Maybe the GOP will pass legislation that mandates no minimum wage for anyone younger than 18. The Walmart would be staffed with mostly children ages 5 to 18 with a few adult managers to keep them in line working for that dollar a day.
Before the federal child labor laws, in some states, children, both boys and girls, as young as seven, could be sold into a form of slaver into prostitution—that might be one job that will always be available.
Does that mean that the Bill Gates/Arne Duncan Common Core agenda—after the public schools are gone—will eventually lead to some children being forced to work in prostitution when their desperate parents, who live in poverty, have to sell some or all of their children so they will have enough money to buy food and pay for shelter?
“At the end of 19th century, moral reformers drew the age of consent into campaigns against prostitution. Revelations of child prostitution were central to those campaigns, a situation that resulted, reformers argued, from men taking advantage of the innocence of girls just over the age of consent (from 10 to 12 years of age at the time). W. T. Stead’s series of articles entitled, “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon,” published in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885, was the most sensational and influential of these exposés.”
http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/teaching-modules/230
Yes, we were poor, but didn’t know it as kids. Dad worked long hours and Mom was seriously ill. Dad hunted squirrel and rabbit in lean times – no kidding. People like Petrilli and the elitist Reformers would never understand struggle. I was fortunate to attend a public school with great teachers and state supported college that allowed me to pay most tuition flipping burgers. But struggling with heavy work schedules and helping my mother does impact learning. You are always one step from the abyss.
Where we lived in California, we didn’t have squirrels to hunt but my mother raised chickens and rabbits in the backyard and did the butchering when it was time to eat.
I have one image branded on my brain of a chicken she had just beheaded and it got out of her hands and the headless body ran around the back yard spraying blood everywhere. I was maybe three or four at the time or even a bit older.
Until my dad landed the union job, we didn’t eat out. We ate at home and the cuts of meat were usually the cheapest available or it was beans, tomato sauce and pasta. Fast food wasn’t an option until later and even then the habits were not to rely on cheap fast food.
That is so much the difference between the elite like Bush, Walker, and Kasich who are now falling all over themselves to try to look like regular Americans, and people who have worked hard in life.
Lots of kids would be excluded with such a narrow definition of acceptance, including Jay Z and Pitbull, both former drug dealers that are now wealthy. Pitbull has even figured out how to cash in on the charter craze! My point is that lots of kids take time to find their way, and they may not fit the mold. I am not endorsing these rappers as role models; what I am saying is that America should be a place of second and sometimes third chances.
I agree that America should be a place for 2nd and 3rd chances, but the crooked corporate reformers don’t seem to want any chances for anyone—except for them so they never end up in court for their endless lies and fraud.
What the fascist reformers want is a Go Directly to Prison card to hand to any children who aren’t tested to be college and career ready probable starting in preschool and immediate execution for teachers when the test scores don’t show a miracle.
Lloyd Lofthouse: your first sentence, taken from the posting, is another way of saying that “choice” to folks like Michael Petrilli means having the power to perform educational triage—
Save the few worthy strivers, let the many unworthy non-strivers die (figuratively, literally, it doesn’t matter).
Of course, that’s not what figures prominently in their sales pitches and literature.
That’s why this blog and so many others like it, and other activities in support of a “better education for all,” are so important.
They rip the mask off the faces of the leaders of the “new civil rights movement of our time” and make their motives plain for everyone to see—
“For greed all nature is too little.” [Lucius Annaeus Seneca]
Keep writing. I’ll keep reading.
😎
I can’t believe anyone who had anything to do with the charter system in Ohio is telling public school superintendents they should adopt that governance scheme.
Thanks but no thanks. Not really impressed with the ed reform leadership on “good governance”. It looks exactly like the private sector “corporate model” to me, and I’m not clear who the shareholders are.
José Vilson has an important reflection on conflating the needs of high poverty schools with denigrating those living in poverty:
“People in poverty don’t want others to see their kids as poor things, but as people living in a condition they can’t control right now.”
http://thejosevilson.com/the-crosshairs-of-high-expectations-and-poverty/
And Stewart Little documents how GERM is being spread about worldwide, in this post focussing on Australia.
(GERM = Global Education Reform Movement)
http://theconversation.com/why-poor-kids-continue-to-do-poorly-in-the-education-game-23500
Did anyone standup and shout BULLSHIT about 50 times during that speech??
Oh, I see, they’re all supes so they know how to “sit and listen politely and properly”.
To be able to jump up 50 times and yell BULLSHIT, you’d have to have fifty willing volunteers because each time someone did, they’d probably be escorted out or arrested. I suggest that if 50 people volunteer to jump up and yell BULLSHIT every time these frauds make a false claim, then they assign numbers that designate the order they jump up so there would be 50 BULLSHITS.
You know, if one person, just one person, does it, they may think he’s
Really sick and they won’t listen to him.
And if two people do it, [bullshit] in harmony, they may think they’re both friends and
They won’t listen to either of them.
And if three people do it! Can you imagine three people standin up and yellin’ “bullshit” and walkin’ out? They may think it’s an
Organization!
And can you imagine fifty people a day? I said FIFTY people a day . . .
Walkin’ in, yellin’ “bullshit” and walkin’ out? Friends,
They may think it’s a MOVEMENT, and that’s what it is: THE DUANE
SWACKER ANTI-TESTINGMOVEMENT! . . . and all you gotta to do is join us!.
Funny.
I had the same flashback.
TAGO!
Fordham, which is Ohio based, published a Gates underwritten paper, 9 years ago, “Turning the Corner on Quality: Too Many Poorly Performing Charter Schools”.
If Fordham was more than a paper tiger in Ohio, the legislature would have acted upon their research and influence.
So, why would Fordham’s hollow words be listened to or, quoted anywhere?
If Fordham was ethical, they would accept accountability for their failure and remove their hands from the Waltons’ pockets.
well said Linda.
There’s an interesting entry at WikiSpooks. “The neoconservatives have reactivated the Atlantic networks (e.g. German Marshall Fund) to use in projects dominated by two terms,
neoliberal and soft power. Both terms were coined by Joseph Nye, of Harvard Kennedy School.”
Wikipedia states that Nye’s work is popular with Clinton and Obama.
Craig Kennedy, Trustee Emeritus of Fordham Institute, is President of the German Marshall Fund.
The Fund’s “initiatives (are intended) to strengthen democracy”, which is ironic given the condition of democracy, in the U.S., described as the best government money can buy.
John F. Kennedy would not be a neoconservative nor, a neoliberal.
It appears to me that the U.S. democracy was destroyed, based on fear of communism or, the communist scare was used to mask oligarch takeover.
“It appears to me that the U.S. democracy was destroyed, based on fear of communism or, the communist scare was used to mask oligarch takeover.”
It was the second. Since 9/11 “terrorism” has been used to mask the oligarch/plutocrat takeover.
Mike Petrilli is often a guest on the Kojo Nnamdi Show in Washington. A lot of the time, they have him on alone as if he is an impartial researcher who can frame the discussion. He can be fair minded at times but at key points always turns into a true partisan. I’ve been a lone person complaining about this. Recently they did have a show on opting out with Petrilli, a Washington Post journalist to give background instead of Petrilli, and even a critic of “education reform” to counter him. This change was probably not a response to my comments.
http://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2015-03-03/opting-out-of-standardized-testing
Let’s assume the change was a “response to your comments”. If enough of us protest and refuse to let up, it shows grit, which the “reformers claim is the key to success.
I’ve been asking Ohio journalists why they can’t write an education article without quoting Fordham.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2015/02/26/things-every-kid-should-master/uM72LGr63zeaStOp9zGyrJ/story.html?event=event25
Diane,
Since you have some knowledge of Mike I’ve always tried to find out if he’s related to Frank Petrilli who is heavily involved in NYC finance. Frank was the CEO of TD Waterhouse, Etrade, COO of Amex Bank. Also, he was educated at Fordham Buisiness!
Different Fordham.
Bat1776, I don’t know, but the Fordham Institute in DC has nothing to do with Fordham University. It is named for a deceased businessman in Dayton, Ohio, whose fortune was used to create the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. He died many years before the foundation was created. He bought a lot of blue-chip stocks and held on to them for decades.
Poverty isn’t about money as much as what your parents did with it. Perhaps Petrilli has never taught students who suffered from PTSD, or students whose mother was a street walker, or students who were gang raped, or students who earn A’s while the step-parent sexually molested them, or students who had witnessed a mafia murder, or students whose relatives had been murdered near-by, or students who worked the grocery store parking lot helping old ladies with groceries for quarters in order to buy plastic, too-large shoes and who slept in a closet in the apartment shared with another family, or students who slept under the bed to escape the crying of the newest baby, or students whose entire family were gang members, or students who were heroin addicts, or students who become meth addicts trying to find friends in the gay community, or students who brag about having a book (one) in their house, or students who were stabbed on the way to school, or students who turned their parents in for drug abuse, or students whose mothers left them for a boyfriend, or students who believe family comes before studying, or students whose parents feel an education is worthless, or students who left their mothers and stepfathers and moved in with their own boyfriends, or students who live in a tent in the backyard because the parent is punishing them, or students who get A’s in sixth grade and hook up with married men by fifteen, or students mesmerized by the occult and devil worship, or students who were pregnant at twelve, or students who had not been in school until fourth grade, or students who had never seen a doctor, or students whose father is in jail, or students who live with relatives because their parents have been deported, or students whose parents did not go to school and others whose parents never went beyond grade three.
Petrilli may have been one of these. He may have had high test scores. His teachers may have taught to the middle of the class and he suffered as a result. And yes, one of the above students may wind up at the Fordham Institute. But most will not, and I don’t believe in sending them to be fodder in a war because of it. (This actually happened during the Viet Nam war.) They all deserve an education and pursuit of happiness.
But their lives will be further “disrupted” as their schools are repeatedly torn apart because of their test scores. And people who have never been “disrupted” in their own lives will go blithely on their way. Some very smart people left teaching in poor neighborhoods because they could not force their idea of change . Where did that leave their students? And what made them think they could change it for the better anyway? They were just unwilling to work that hard in my estimation.
Change happened every year I taught, contrary to what people in mostly white, middle-class communities experienced. I kept hoping for things to be the same, so my students would have one stable component to their lives: a teacher their older sibling had had, a building with which they were quite familiar, a time schedule that was predictable. I kept hoping for materials relevant for that period of their lives, and I kept hoping for instructional leadership. (Instead I provided my own instructional leadership and materials.) But what I usually got was top-down change that was mostly time-consuming and irrelevant.
Frankly, charters, vouchers, test-scores, have not led to real innovation any more than I received from my district. It has led to separating the students above from those whose parents provide for them. Nothing has trickled down in the way of instructional leadership or stability or materials.
The deck chairs are just being rearranged
I’m a college student writing a research paper on charter schools. I read this post thinking it might be a possible way to see both sides of the charter school debate. As a conservative, I believe that Common Core and NCLB are the wrong way to test the success of a school. But I don’t understand why Mike Petrilli is such a vicious monster. Why does he have no right to talk about education reform? You haven’t shown me why his beliefs are wrong. All you have done is used another man’s words to bash him. I don’t like Common Core and I can see why Petrilli might be distrusted for that reason. But all you have done is attacked who he is as a person. You say he’s never been a teacher, superintendent, researcher etc. But does that mean his ideas are all bad? All you do is ad hominem attack him. What do you mean when you say he “dissed” defenders of public education? You claim he’s trying to beat up on poor kids. You claim he is against everything that you stand for. I just want some actual facts about what he said, not another man’s interpretation of them. I know what Peter Greene thinks of Petrilli’s view. But what is Petrilli’s view in his own words? I know Greene’s translation of them. But if I was to try and explain why Petrilli’s view is wrong, all I would be able to do is quote Greene’s translation. I respect you and enjoy watching you smash Common Core to pieces in interviews. I just wanted more facts. Thanks!